The rest of the trip

No, this isn't the end of my writing about the trip, but there were a few common bonds in what we experienced outside of Philadelphia, and actually a lot of this includes Langhorne, where we were before.

I thought about calling it the rest of Pennsylvania, but there was a lot of Pennsylvania that we didn't see, and some of this was true about where we went in Minnesota as well.

We took auto transportation from the airport to Langhorne and back to Philadelphia, but then we went by bus to Easton and Hershey. Hershey did not have a Greyhound station, so we went to Harrisburg and took a taxi to Hershey, then back to Harrisburg for our flight to Minneapolis. We taxied to our hotel in Bloomington, and took their airport shuttle back for our return trip.

Philadelphia and Bloomington were the only hotels where they did not ask for our license plate number. There was such a strong assumption that we would have cars that they did not even bother asking.

This makes sense, because none of these locations were built for pedestrians, so people who want to get around once they are there are likely to need cars. Actually, even Bloomington was not built for walking at all, but there are more shuttle options, and visitors can get by without a car because of that.

That seems like it would increase the need for taxis, but because so many people own or rent cars, that appears to be the opposite. There are still taxis, but they are often private operations, with less of a sense of professionalism, though they were generally still friendly.

We did not expect to find so many amusement parks everywhere. We knew about Sesame Place, Hershey Park, and the Nickelodeon park in the Mall of America, but on our bus trips we kept seeing other collections of roller coasters and slides. Given how seasonal these attractions can be, especially with East Coast winters, we were amazed. In Oregon we have Oaks Park and the Enchanted Forest, and it just seems different. That was interesting to see.

Being around at the start of football season, it was interesting to trace team loyalty via doughnuts. There would be a football doughnut everywhere, and if there wasn't a pro team for that city it would be a college team.

The worse piece of savagery that we saw in these wild areas happened in Easton. We got McDonalds for breakfast, and the English muffins for our sandwiches were not toasted. Fortunately this was on our way out of town, and that helped to calm the despair. I'd hate to just decide people were barbarians based on that, but come on!